Excited for July

July is my favorite month of the year. Not only are my birthday, Independence Day and the baseball All-Star Game all in July, but July means summer vacation, a reprieve from school and everything that comes with it. Now that I am in the perpetual summer vacation of alumnus-hood, I have equally high hopes for the 2009 edition.

I have a lot more time to read these days, which is extremely exciting. I'm currently working on Australian novelist and critic John Harwood's The Ghost Writer, which is a fascinatingly subtle ghost story. After that I'll be looking for something else, so if you've read something good recently, please let me know! My previous book was Christopher Whitcomb's Black, which was a fun action / spy book. If you're into Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn, give it a look. It's a quick read.

In other news, a federal advisory panel voted yesterday to recommend that the FDA ban Vicodin and Percocet, currently among the most frequently prescribed painkillers in the world. Interestingly, the panel was not concerned about the addictive potential of the narcotic ingredients but about the potential for liver damage from the acetaminophen in the pill. Overdoses of acetaminophen (which is the active ingredient in Tylenol) cause more than 4,000 deaths and ten times as many hospitalizations each year. Unsurprisingly, Tylenol's manufacturer "strongly disagrees" with the panel's recommendations.